


After the Afterparty

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: First Meetings, House Party, M/M, Neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 05:25:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9307232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Harry loves a good party, even ones thrown in his own flat where he inevitably will be cleaning up a  whole lot of mess the next day. This party may be a bit too much to handle though, when a bit of a disaster happens and suddenly his fit neighbor who has a penchant for not wearing clothes shows up on his doorstep.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a prompt challenge that a group of us are participating in for the prompt "Foundation". To read the other amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, you can [click here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/foundation) and to see all fics written as part of the challenge, you can [click here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/2017_hl_prompt_challenge).

The events leading up to Louis arriving in Harry’s doorway are as follows;

 **First** , Wednesday afternoon Nick calls Harry up and asks him if he has any weekend plans. Since Harry doesn’t know where his diary has gone, he assumes he doesn’t have any. He always assumes he doesn’t have any. Often this means he ends up with frantic texts from friends asking when he’s going to show up, but, well. Things happen.

 **Second** , the party Nick plans ends up at Harry’s house. How does that happen? Well, Harry’s aware Nick is good at sweet talking. He’s very aware of this. And yet when Nick decides to wax poetic about how nice it would be for Harry to host a little get-together, because he’s _such_ a good host and his flat always smells like sweets because Harry _used to be a baker_ and says it’s just overall a much better place for a party than Nick’s flat with Stinky and Pig at everyone’s heels… Well. Harry’s a sucker for some sweet talk. So Saturday afternoon finds him carefully putting away the more fragile decorations in his flat (his antique biscuit tin, for instance, and the glass bird that hangs in the kitchen window). He picks up pizza and beer and bakes banana bread.

 **Third** , a hell of a lot of people end up in Harry’s flat. He might even consider it a fuck-ton. For a one-bedroom flat in a rather run-down building, it may even be a little worrying how crowded it is. But it doesn’t particularly matter to Harry, because he’s a lightweight on his third beer. At this point, nothing really matters to him other than the story he’s currently telling about Bukowski, to his clearly rapt audience. At least, it was about Bukowski. He’s sort of gone into a tangent about the dream he had the other day regarding a train to Narnia. It was a great dream but now that he’s thinking about it he can’t remember how it ends.

 **Fourth** , the sink in the toilet runs over. Harry doesn’t know this part yet, as he’s still attempting to tell a story about Bukowski or a train. Or, Narnia. Hm. Where was he going with that?

The knock on his door signals maybe a bit of relief from the four guests gathered on the couches around Harry (who were maybe mostly looking at their phones at this point anyway). Harry knows he left a sign on the door for guests to just come in, but maybe they are shy and need some encouragement – which he is happy to offer! All guests are welcome, after all. 

When he opens the door, he realizes that this is a very cute and very unknown guest. Harry thought for sure he knew everybody Nick invited! The guest stood in front of him does look a bit familiar, though…

Also, now that Harry is looking properly, this guest also seems to be lacking what most would consider to be essential clothing. Hm.

“Is this your flat?” the guest demands. His voice is high reminds Harry of crisp morning air, rather like the fall atmosphere from his dream last night. The one with the train and Bukowski.

Harry blinks. “Of course it is.” He pauses a minute to look the guest over again. “Why are you in your pants?”

The guest looks down at his bare self and then back at Harry. “Because your flat is leaking!” he says, his voice going a little shrill. “I was soaked!”

Harry frowns. “Why is my flat leaking?”

“Well I sure don’t know,” the guests huffs. “But I’d love it if it _stopped_ because mine is getting horribly wet now, and I don’t want to have to get all new furniture!”

Something finally clicks into place for Harry, his eyes widening. “Are you the one who just moved into the flat below mine?” 

“Yes and I have to say it’s a rather horrible welcoming party to drown my flat,” the guest argues.

“Does that mean you’re not a guest then?” Harry clarifies.

The guest frowns. “Of course not! Why would I show up to a party dressed like this?”

“I try not to judge,” Harry says, shrugging. “Would you like a beer?” This not-guest is quite good looking, and Harry would really love for him to become a guest again.

“I’d rather you stop your flat from leaking on mine,” the not-guest says. Harry apparently has been rather obvious because after a moment the guest shrieks, “And stop objectifying me!” and slams the door in Harry’s face.

He slams Harry’s own door in his face.

Well.

-

Harry finds the source of the leak about fifteen minutes later. He _does_ mean to search for it earlier, he really does. It’s just that halfway back he remembers the story he was telling about Bukowski, and of course they must be left on tenterhooks about it, so he goes back to finish the story – but halfway through he realises that his beer has gone all warm and rather disgusting, so he excuses himself (ever so politely of course) to get a new one from the kitchen. When he’s in the kitchen though, he runs into Niall, who’s mixing Irish Car Bombs, because he says they’re a tradition at parties, but Harry thinks maybe Niall has had too much to drink and his memory has gone all fuzzy because Harry has never had an Irish Car Bomb from Niall before.

Which means, of course, that he has to have one immediately. 

So it’s another four minutes and thirteen seconds from when Harry first downs the Irish Car bomb until his stomach proceeds to tell him that this was one of the worst decisions Harry has made all night. This means he has to run to the loo, upsetting his poor tum even further, and it’s only once he opens the door that he remembers the mysterious not-guest who was complaining about the leak into his flat. Which is to say, the entire room is flooded, and the sink is still running.

Oh dear.

But now that Harry’s in here, he has a much more pressing appointment with the toilet bowl. So it’s really another few minutes until the tap is turned off.

-

The events leading up to Harry meeting Louis for the second time are as follows;

 **First** , the last of the guests make their way out around two. Actually, the last guest leaves closer to 2:30 because after Harry does a tidy, he walks into his bedroom only to find that Liam has fallen asleep in his bed. Harry doesn’t actually remember seeing Liam after ten, and wonders just how long he’s been asleep here.

 **Second** , Harry seriously considers just falling into bed. He hasn’t had much to drink (or anything, really) since the Car Bomb, and his drunken haze has been reduced to a bit of a fuzzy mind and a penchant to giggles (which he often has anyway). He’s just so _tired_ and his bed sounds so _nice_ , and brushing his teeth sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary work…

But then he remembers what a hangover is like, and thinks with dread on the pounding of his skull that will happen at approximately noon tomorrow if he doesn’t properly hydrate tonight. So…

 **Third** , Harry makes his way to the loo to drink as much water as he can manage and grab some paracetamol for tomorrow.

Too late, he remembers the disaster from earlier (probably Niall’s fault) and the flooded room, his socks making contact with a good centimetre of water and immediately soaking his feet.

Ew.

He spends several minutes deep in thought about how it would be of great benefit to his future self to attempt to mot up the floor now, but on the other hand… _sleep_.

Sleep trumps future self every time.

His feet squelch across the tile as he makes his way to the sink. It’s as he’s opening the cabinet to grab the paracetamol that a _rrrrkch_ sound echoes through the room and – 

**Fourth,** Harry finds himself freefalling through the floor.

-

Whatever he hits is softer than the porcelain sink he was anticipating landing on – the flat below his must be set up differently, thank the fuck Christ.

That being said, it still hurts like a bitch and after bouncing off some sort of furniture like a verifiable ragdoll, he hits the ground with an ”OOF” and a number of colourful expletives.

And then he just… lays there. After the deafening sounds of debris falling and clattering around him dies down, everything goes terribly quiet, and it feels as though to move and break the silence would be wrong somehow.

Plus, he’s rather afraid that he’s broken something.

So he lays there in silence and tries to think what to do. He should probably move. Eventually. Once his heart stops beating so erratically and his head stops pounding so much.

He’s startled out of his frozen state by a set of hurried footsteps and a voice very loudly going, “What the fuck?”

“Ow,” says Harry. 

He turns his head to see the guest-not-guest from earlier standing there staring at him as if Harry is an alien who has just crash landed in his living room. Well.

“What the fuck?” The boy says, even louder this time.

“Um.” Harry attempts to move an arm. “I seem to have fallen through your floor.”

The boy frowns. “No you haven’t,” he argues. “You fell through my ceiling.”

Harry groans. It’s close to three in the morning and he doesn’t have time for semantics like this. He brushes away dust from his face (that arm seems to be in good working condition, nice). He looks at guest-not-guest again. Guest-not-guest is wearing pants, but they’re different than the pair he was wearing earlier – these ones are red.

“You changed your pants,” Harry says because he’s apparently never heard of a filter.

Guest-not-guest looks down at himself as if surprised at this information. Then he looks at Harry. He’s looking at Harry like he doesn’t know what to do. Harry’s not sure what to do either. This is rather awkward.

“They’re very nice pants,” Harry says, because he is a disaster and can’t keep his mouth shut.

“Well,” Guest-not-guest says, “I think I’d better put the kettle on.”

He turns and walks away out of the room and leaves Harry still lying in the mess he’s in. Harry’s just contemplating attempting to get up when from the other room the boy yells, “And don’t move until I get back!”

As Harry still isn’t sure what state his limbs are in, he’s actually fairly okay with that.

No more than five minutes later, two mugs of tea are set down in front of where Harry is lying, on what he has now determined to be a carpet. The boy crouches down on front of him with a small emergency kit. 

“Any broken bones?” the Guest-not-guest asks.

“I’m Harry,” says Harry.

“Yes I understand your brain might have taken a bit of a knock,” the boy rolls his eyes. “But is anything broken? I need to know if I need to call someone or if I can just stick you all over with plasters and send you home.”

“If I tell you whether I have any broken bones will you tell me your name?” Harry asks.

The boy purses his lips. “Louis.” He says. “But for someone with possibly broken limbs and a hole in their floor you’re being awfully bold.”

Harry attempts to shrug. There’s a twinge in his shoulder but he thinks he manages the gesture. “I’ve possibly got broken limbs and a hole in my floor. What have I got to lose?”

Louis cracks a smile. “You make a good point. Now let’s try to get you sitting up.”

It takes a bit of work, and a whole lot of clearing away broken tiles, but with Louis’s help Harry manages to sit up (so far nothing seems broken, although he’s considering the possibility of sprained ankles). Finally taking a proper look around he finds himself in a sparsely furnished living room. He seems to have managed to land, at least initially, on a nice overstuffed plush chair which broke his fall well. 

“Just moved in this week,” Louis says in his defence when he sees Harry surveying the room. “And then you had to go and drip on everything I own. Gonna have to get this chair replaced now you know.”

“It was probably Niall’s fault,” Harry says, although it’s mostly to himself.

“Sure it is,” Louis’s sitting next to him on the other cleared space, sipping his tea. He’s stuck a fair number of plasters on Harry’s arms, although very few of the spots he put them on were real injuries. 

“Least you’ve got a working loo,” Harry says.

“Right,” Louis agrees. “If I were to pick between a sitting room and a loo I supposed I would choose a loo. That being said, I will be sending the bill for all of this straight to your address.”

Harry thinks about his job in the bakery. “You won’t get very far that way,” he says. “But I can pay you in scones if you want. Or macarons.” 

Louis unwraps another plaster and reaches right over to stick it on Harry’s face. “Cheeky,” he says. “I’m calling the landlord in the morning and having you charged with breaking and entering.”

Harry huffs out a laugh. It turns into a wheeze “Breaking and entering!” he laughs joyously. “Get it? Because I broke your ceiling!”

Louis’s giving him a look and Harry’s not sure if it’s exasperated or fond. Possibly both. He’ll go with both.

Drinking down the last of his tea, Harry turns to Louis with a straight face saying, “I’ve got a serious question for you though.”

“Yeah?” Louis asks, looking surprised by Harry’s sudden change in demeanour.

“Before I go back to my flat… can I use your loo?”

-

In the end, Harry is eternally grateful that Louis insist he does not return to his flat. He sleeps on a pile of couch cushions in Louis’s bedroom (because sleeping in the living room with the debris seemed… rather dystopian), and the next day the landlord brings in a number of repairmen to look at Harry’s flat and assess the damage. They assess that, had Harry come back to his flat, there’s a good chance he would have simply fallen through the floor somewhere else. The entire foundation is old enough that the beams holding up his floor were splintering and fractured all over the place; all it took was somebody (Niall) messing up with the plumbing for the whole place to come tumbling down.

Two weeks later finds Harry waking up in a bedroom three floors below his previous one, with the sun streaming in his window and a pounding headache.

The flatwarming party had lasted until the early hours and of course he hadn’t hydrated himself properly so here he was with a nasty hangover and a need to shower.

When he rolls over with a groan, he cracks his eyes open and finds to his astonishment a glass of water and paracetamol. With them is a small post-it note which reads 

_You’ve promised me a first date tonight and if you’re too hungover to deliver then I’m going to piss in all your right boots_

_PS I have to work this morning UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE but I made you some scrambled eggs they’re in the refrigerator._

Harry is eternally grateful that Louis’s flat was also deemed unsafe, meaning he and Louis were forced to move into the only unoccupied flat in the building, It’s working out wonderfully so far.

_PPS I’m wearing the red pants you liked so much._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna make something less crack fic-y next week probably. Hopefully.
> 
> If you liked it, consider reblogging my fic post [on tumblr here](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/155813882174/after-the-afterparty-by-ladylondonderry), kay?
> 
>  
> 
> Also for everybody's enjoyment, the original summary I had written for this is as follows;
> 
> _It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if the host of a party does not keep their eyes on a party guest, that guess will inevitably forget to turn the tap off and the flat will flood and suddenly the host's neighbor will show up and he doesn't seem to like wearing clothes so maybe it's not that bad that the guest of the party that the host is throwing forgot to turn the taps off._


End file.
